About Effort and Non-Effort Driven Tasks

Let me give you a simple example:
Let’s say your task is to paint a room and it will take one person 10 hours to paint it.
If we put two people on the task it will take 5 hours to complete.
If we put 4 people on the task it will take 2.5 hours to complete.

So essentially the more **effort** we put on the task the faster it is completed.
Hence this is an effort driven task. Therefore, as we add or subtract resource assignments to this task the duration will expand or contract respectfully or the amount of effort or work will be evenly divided among the assigned resources.

So what’s an example of a **non-effort** driven task:

Say our task is to drive a bus.
There is only one driver’s seat, one steering wheel and one gas pedal.
The bus can only go so fast and so far in a given period of time.
Essentially, only one person can do the task. So if we add more people to the task it is still only going to go so far and so fast in that same given period of time.
Therefore, adding additional effort does nothing to affect the completion of the task.

This is a simple way to think of **effort** versus **non-effort** driven tasks.

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Advisicon is a Project, Program & Portfolio Management Company. We transform your organization's project management with a mix of methodology and technology that delivers results. Our team specializes in technology implementations, application and workflow development, training and consulting.